September arrived today. Labor Day weekend approaches, summer's last hurrah. Change is in the air. Schedules settle down, old rhythms return, new patterns emerge. Here on Hickory Lane, schoolroom walls and spaces beckon a country boy and mama indoors (or at least they will if only those crazy tomatoes would give it a rest!), soccer gear runs amuck on the back porch, and evening work ends earlier as a cool mountain breeze ushers dusk across the misty valley.In keeping with the season of change and new routines, I'd like to try a new pattern here on Hickory Lane Musings as well. I'm calling it:

Thursday are for thankfulness.

Every November, here in the United States, we set aside one (ONE!) Thursday as a day the of Thanksgiving. We celebrate with feasting, family, and football, not necessarily in that order. But it is not enough, not nearly enough. And of course, neither is one day a week enough to express all my thanks, all my gratitude for all that God is and does in my life. If you've been reading here awhile, you know that I'm a list-makin', list-lovin' woman, and my favorite list of all is my Lenten List of Gratitude which has taken on a life of its own. What began as my tidy little offering ofthanksgiving to God has been quietly slipping itself into the margins of my notebook and my life. It has become His gift to me, changing my perspective, broadening my vision to catch glimpses of all He is doing, while simultaneously narrowing my focus to see, really see, His hand in the smallest details of an ordinary day. (How does He do that? I don't know, I'm just thankful He does!) Two great blue herons fly across my morning window view. (Oh, I'll put them on The List.) An email from a far place offers a word of encouragement at precisely the hour I need it (The List again!) or something I've been praying about for months is suddenly resolved in a way I'd never considered. (Yes! For The List!!) This perspective of gratitude, it's not a destination, it's just part of my journey, and days like today I realize I have "...miles to go before I sleep...Still, on Thursdays, I'll put bits of my list here - - for my sake, to keep me watching and listening. - for your sake, to challenge you to create your own list. - for His sake, because it is the least I can do. Thursdays are for thankfulness.

-Some of you know I'm in the midst of saying goodbye to an entire era of my life, cleaning out my childhood home in preparation for my parents' estate and property sale on Saturday. The day after tomorrow. Some days I forget to be thankful but God never forgets to be faithful. He's just like that. (And, I'm thankful for that!!) So, although it's late, here goes with a few bits ofgratitude from today's list:

-I have a childhood to grieve, a "place" to which I can bid farewell, all my growing up years centered in one solid blue shuttered house.

-I had some quiet, alone days in the house to wipe warm wood floors and salty tears.

-Although I am an only child, I haven't really felt alone in the process. Husband, friends, church family, neighbors, cousins, my parents friends. So many cards. And meals. And prayers. And hours spent carting armloads of ...stuff and cleaning and sweating. So. much. love.

-And then this morning, one last breath-taking Lancaster County sunrise. One last time to look across the field, to stand in pj's and try to take it in, to take in all that my little camera couldn't capture: the mockingbirds fussing from tree to shrub, the swirl of mist rising, the hum of traffic, the whisper of a breeze in the tall, tall pines. One last sunrise, full of poignant hope and promise. This is not the end. We are not home yet. Not one of us.

9:07pm I'm writing from the porch swing, pleased to know my electronic rigging will extend to this point. (I do not trust battery when blogging.) Evening descends in a noisy country way. Horses snort along the creek, a distant mockingbird raises rowdy vesper praises, and robins have begun the ritual roost ruckus. Why do so many of them insist on our huge maple as their evening abode? (I clapped and watched nearly two dozen scatter like blown leaves...only, they'll be back!) Like children arguing again over who will ride "shotgun," they cannot, cannot, cannot settle themselves without a fuss. But one robin is quiet tonight, or at least she is not noisy on my side of the house. The nest on the porch light is suddenly empty. Just a day ago (or was it two?) bits of baby bird sprouted out of the top, and when she wasn't scolding from the tree, Mama was prancing along the porch railing, waiting, daring me to open the door. But now the nest is empty, still, quiet, just a mud dabbed pile of bent twigs and grass. Having read this far, you might be expecting another blog on being a parent, a mom with an empty nest. But not tonight. Tonight I write as a daughter going back to an empty nest.

Health issues- my mother's liver cancer and my father's recent stroke and subsequent cognitive gaps - converged into the perfect storm, and suddenly we were helping them move to an apartment at a lovely retirement community in the county they've always called home. I live half a state away, and had often wanted them to move my direction, but now I see their wisdom in staying close to their roots. Having given up so much - the space and most of the "stuff" that had been theirs for 50 years, the freedom to come and go (someone else will drive them now), their familiar neighbors and neighborhood, their beloved bird watching location.... I was glad they didn't have to be hours away from their friends and church family. Visitors descended like...robins?!

I traveled. alot. Made dozens of phone calls. Did trouble shooting across the miles. But still, it wasn't working. They needed more support. He did, she did. They could no longer help each other, they could not help themselves.

After just four weeks in their apartment, we were moving them again, to an apartment in a different area of the same facility. They call it Personal Care, I think of it as assisted living. My parents are now surrounded by support, by loving people, by two rooms full of their favorite chairs and furniture. They have meals and housekeeping and laundry and nursing supervision in their new nest. I think they are settling in, content, relieved. And so am I. For them.

But I must tend to the old nest. It is full of boxes and newspapers and lots of stuff, yet it has never been more empty. And there are discussions with auctioneers and realtors about sales and parking and antiques and food stands and appraisals. Decisions must be made. Soon. Much too soon for me. (We only moved them yesterday. Really.) A question keeps coming from every direction... what do you want from the house? Always that same question... what do you want from the house? I know they are talking about "stuff", Grandma M's china, Uncle Eugene's chair, the freezer. But here's what I think of when I ponder that question:

What do you want from the house...?

- I want the summer rain smell rising from the the driveway in a misty fog and the big puddle that always formed by the side porch, my Dad's nemesis and my barefooted, stomp-splashin' delight.

- I want a one foot square piece of wallpaper from my own wild blue flowered room. The one where I wrote the name of a certain 6th grade boy.

- I want the sound of serious pounding and voices rising through the floor boards from the shop where my Dad and son (pick one, they all reveled in shop time with Grandpa) are creating something.

- I want the view from the kitchen window, Lancaster County countryside at it's finest, with a bluebird box in the foreground..(which didn't quite make it into this picture.)

- I want my old phone number. It was so much fun...the end was 7770. How cool is that?

- I want the feeling of the cool damp cement basement floor on my 8 year old bare feet. ( I don't want the feeling of stepping on a black shelled water beetle. Crunch. Shudder...)- I want the fifty foot blue spruce in the back yard with the hollowed out place where a girl could sit and think. But not in bare feet.

- I want a door. One solid wooden door. The house is full of real doors, darkly stained and glossy, with heavy-duty locks and shiny glass knobs. I'd like to hang one in my house somewhere and know that every now and then, when I want to, when I somehow need to, I could walk back through it like the wardrobe to Narnia, to visit The House. Not the empty nest it is now, but the house as I remember it. I want a door.

But it is not to be. Nothing on my list will make the cut...for they cannot be cut from the fabric that is The House. Yet I will carry them with me. I will gather these memories and dozens more; they are mine alone. No one will auction them off or give them away or toss them into the dumpster. I will chose to walk through those (real) doors in the coming weeks and sort the "stuff" and make the piles and wash the dishes. I may spend some barefoot moments, (I didn't remember my own extreme barefootedness in days gone by until I wrote this tonight), and I will be where my feet are, some days in that empty quiet house and others in my not-yet-empty, noisy house. I choose to cherish yesterday, while living today, every day. Even while I'm clearing a stack of newspapers from Uncle Eugene's (uncomfortable) Windsor chair.

Author

I'm finding my way beyond the maze of the "middle" years (if I'm gonna be 100 and something someday...) ​living life as a country woman who is a writer, gardener, wife, mom, nature observer, teacher,and most of all a much loved child of God.